Why does adding a Depends argument to a package DESCRIPTION cause it not to be compiled for versions after the specified one?

I've just released a package to CRAN which has the following line in the DESCRIPTION file:

Depends: R (>= 2.12.0)

I have never used such a line in a package DESCRIPTION file before, and never had any troubles.

I received the following message a few hours ago, as is typical for CRAN releases:

Dear package maintainer,

this notification has been generated automatically.
Your package maRketSim_0.9.tar.gz has been built for Windows and
will be published within 24 hours in the corresponding CRAN directory
(CRAN/bin/windows/contrib/2.13/).
R version 2.13.1 Patched (2011-07-20 r56455)

All the best,
Uwe Li开发者_StackOverflowgges
(Maintainer of binary packages for Windows)

Now with this package, install.packages(maRketSim) on Windows in R 2.13.1 returns:

In getDependencies(pkgs, dependencies, available, lib) :
  package ‘maRketSim’ is not available (for R version 2.13.1)

The same error occurs in R 2.13.0 on Windows.

Yet the install works just fine in R 2.12.2 on the same machine.

Did including the Depends line mess things up?

---

It works for me on Linux. CRAN says that there are currently no binary builds for Windows or MacOS X. What system/OS were you trying the install on when it failed.

Uwe's (automated) message does mention that it might take up to 24 hours for the new build to reach CRAN and thence out to whatever mirror you are using.

And this does appear to be the issue: there is a binary for maRketSim in http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/contrib/2.12/ but not yet in http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/contrib/2.13/

You just need to wait a little while before you can install the binary for the 2.13.x branch of R/